A Stitch Away
by LucretiaDecoy
Summary: Botan is determining to be useful to the boys during the Demon World Tournament, and although Yusuke turns her away, she finds an unlikely patient in Hiei. As she attempts to heal his wounds and impart some sound advice, the conversation takes an unexpected turn. HieixBotan, will be a short fic.
1. Work the Room

**Work the Room**

The locker rooms at the arena the Demon World Tournament was held in were basic even when held in comparison to those Yusuke remembered from school, but the dark, open, shared facilities were generally not an issue, as most of those using the facilities kept their heads down and just got on with whatever they were doing. And because most of those around Yusuke were keeping their heads down and just getting on with whatever it was they were doing – because Yusuke, just like the others around him, was keeping his head down and not watching whatever anyone else might be doing – the arrival of someone very obviously looking around at what everyone else was doing instantly caused unrest in the locker room.

At first Yusuke threw a sly glance over his shoulder at the source of the distraction so many others in the locker room were already turning towards: but the second his eyes landed on the interruption, he turned fully around with a withering look. Pressed against the far wall, creeping along like the wannabe actor in a grade school rendition of The Pink Panther was an appropriately pink-clad woman, conspicuous as much for her choice of outfit as she was for her ridiculous behaviour or even the fact that she – a woman – was feeling her way into the male locker room. Yusuke watched her, through heavy-lidded eyes, the corners of his mouth turned down and one side twitching slightly, as she guided herself along the wall, pausing every few steps, her head turning back and forth, a baby blue ponytail whipping the wall with a dry slapping sound each time she did so. Over her usual pink kimono, she was inexplicably wearing an ill-fitting red poncho, a white dust mask, and a pair of white, spiral-patterned glasses; the pattern on the glasses was so dense, Yusuke wondered if she could even see out of them.

"Umph, oh, sorry," she grunted as she walked right into a boar demon.

Apparently she could not see through her ridiculous, pointless, impractical glasses.

In one hand she was carrying her stupid Spirit World issue briefcase, and in her other hand she had a small first aid box. The first aid box was sensible, inconspicuous and an expected thing for someone to be carrying around backstage at the tournament: but the large metal briefcase – which kept clanging against the wall as she continued sliding along it – emblazoned with the logo of Spirit World, was arguably more effective than Botan walking through the locker room carrying a giant neon arrow pointing at herself and declaring her a spirit.

"Psst, Yusuke!" she hissed as she finally rounded the corner and began sidling along the lockers Yusuke was standing at. "Yusuke! Over here!"

Yusuke, who was still staring right at her, kept his eyes on her as she edged up to him. She kept approaching until she was standing uncomfortably close to him, at which point she again turned her head abruptly to survey the room, slapping him across the face with her ponytail. Once she had satisfied herself that she had entered the room unnoticed, she turned back to Yusuke, slapping the other side of his face with her ponytail as she did so.

"Yusuke, hello," she whispered. "Don't be nervous, it's me, Botan!"

Her hand holding the first aid box moved up to the side of her head, awkwardly lowering her pointless glasses, large pink eyes peering up at Yusuke over the top of the frames. Her other hand, the one holding her enormous briefcase, came up to the other side of her face, the metal briefcase clanging against the metal lockers as she raised it, her fingers straining over the thick handle to pinch as the dust mask, pulling it down to expose her nose and mouth. She then purposefully winked at Yusuke, who simultaneously felt a vein popping by his left temple.

"You may not have recognised me, but don't be alarmed, I am wearing a very clever disguise," she added, before awkwardly pulling her dust mask back up over her nose.

She left her glasses lowered, leaning towards Yusuke and peering over the frames at him, only further confirming his assumption that she could not actually see through the patterned lenses.

"I've just come to offer my services to you boys."

Yusuke barely had time to smirk at Botan's words before Chu appeared behind her, leaning one arm onto the locker above her head.

"I'd like a piece of that, how much are you charging, Sheila?" he asked the top of her head.

Botan squawked and cowered down under him, her briefcase noisily clattering against the lockers again.

"That's not what I meant and you know it!" she shouted up at him, her raised tone drawing the attention of anyone in the room who had yet to notice her intrusion. "Not that you could afford it even if I was offering that sort of service…"

Chu laughed good naturedly and patted Botan on the shoulder with his characteristic misunderstanding of his own strength, sending her stumbling into Yusuke.

"You're alright, I like you," he told her, before walking off again.

Yusuke caught Botan by her shoulders and righted her at arm's length from himself, waiting until the ringing of her briefcase and the lockers had stopped before addressing her.

"Listen Botan, it's great that you wanna come in here with your little creepy nurse get-up, but there isn't even anyone in Demon World who wants you poking about at them with your dumbass spirit detective tools."

Even though her dust mask was back in place, Yusuke could tell by the way it stretched out that Botan's jaw had dropped open as she gasped at his words.

"I'm not here in my capacity as assistant to the spirit detective–"

"Well that's good, since I'm not the spirit detective any more."

"–I'm here in my capacity as team manager, to help you boys heal up your wounds!"

Botan shook her first aid box in front of Yusuke's face, but he casually swatted it aside.

"This isn't a team tournament, you're not our manager, and I haven't even fought yet today, so you're absolutely wasting your time," he told her.

"Well that's a fine way to thank your team manager!" she haughtily replied.

"Unless the "team manager" line is just an excuse to come into the boys' locker room and get an eyeful."

Botan took a little longer to respond and there was even a noticeable delay before she acted outraged at the accusation, which only brought another smirk to Yusuke's face.

"Don't be ridiculous, Yusuke!" she eventually recovered. "I am not in the least bit interested in seeing any of these oafs naked!"

"Really?"

"Absolutely! The very idea that I would–"

"Oh hey look, Kurama just got out the shower."

"Where?"

Yusuke's eyes were stung by Botan's ponytail yet again slapping him across the face, but he considered the discomfort a small price to pay for the colour Botan's face turned as she slowly turned back to look at him again.

"That was very mean of you, Yusuke," she said in a low voice that was probably meant to sound admonishing but came out sounding far more meek and guilt-ridden than anything else.

"Mean that I lied, or mean that I got you all excited for nothing?" Yusuke asked her, his smirk widening into an amused grin.

"I'm not excited!" Botan snapped defensively, her face turner even redder.

"I guess not…" Yusuke slowly replied. "Maybe just a little… Titillated."

"No… Wait… I'm not… Wh-uh?"

Yusuke wiggled his eyebrows at Botan, and her dust mask stretched out again as a slow, dramatic gasp seeped through the cloth.

"You can't even see that through my–!" she hissed, waving her hands – and therefore also her cases – in front of her chest.

"I guess it's just cold in here then, huh Botan?"

"Your mean-spirited jokes are ice cold, Yusuke Urameshi!"

Yusuke rolled his eyes, waving a dismissive hand at Touya, who had appeared by his shoulder, casting a worried look in Botan's direction at the mention of the temperature around them.

"Look Botan, why don't you just go back to helping Koenma keep his face in place," he suggested.

Botan bristled and pouted and glowered at him, but he was unaffected. He could not even begin to sympathise with her, as even a scatter-brain like her ought to realise how absurd her presence in the locker room and her behaviour was.

"Well if you don't appreciate the help I am so generously offering to you–"

"The help I so obviously don't need."

"–then I will take my box and my healing touch elsewhere, to someone who can and will appreciate it!"

Yusuke smirked in spite of himself as he saw Chu perking up a short distance behind Botan.

"I appreciate your healing hands and I could definitely use your box over here," he called over, raising a hand in the air.

Botan's eyes glowed with rage and her shoulders squared, her ire directed entirely at Yusuke despite him doing little more than standing on the spot and enjoying Chu's remark. He began to suspect he may not rid himself of her, that her incessant insistence on interfering – or "helping" as she put it – may yet see her shadowing him for the remainder of the day, her masked face even joining him by the edges of the floor as he fought in the next round of the tournament, fulfilling her self-appointed duty as his "manager": a title she gave herself to excuse her nagging. But, just when it seemed as though he would be burdened with her, her angered rigidity relaxed, her eyes grew wide, and, again, her ponytail slapped him across the face.

"Yoo-hoo! Wait for me!"

Yusuke blinked away the sting of her hair from his eyes and turned his head curiously to watch Botan cut across the middle of the locker room, her heavy metal briefcase narrowly missing banging into Jin's crotch as he left the shower area, his most sensitive areas only barely covered by a thin cotton towel.

"Um, is it wise to let her do this?"

Suzuka leaned a shoulder against a locker, blue eyes shadowed under a frown as he watched Botan cross the room. Yusuke, who had simply been pleased to be rid of her, then felt a pang of concern, turning sharply to check exactly what new peril she was willingly hurtling herself into. She stopped by the entrance, where a contestant from the first fight of the day was returning to the locker room.

"Psst, Hiei! Hiei, over here! Hiei, hello. You may not recognise me, but don't be alarmed, I am wearing a very clever disguise!"

"Oh shit," Yusuke grumbled.


	2. A Stitch Away

**A Stitch Away**

The view into the locker room was not a pleasant one for Hiei, and not because the facilities were surprisingly minimal – even the arena in the human world that hosted the Dark Tournament offered better facilities to the participants – but rather because the space was not designed to host more than a dozen bodies at any one time, and there were nearly twice that many in the locker room already, including several individuals famed for their inability to comprehend either their own bulk or the concept of others' personal space. Some of those within were pressing hands against lockers or walls, some were holding towels around themselves and Hiei was pushing a fist against his midsection to stop any of his innards falling out of the gaping wound he had been left with from his recent victory. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to find a quiet, dark corner to conceal himself into where he could sleep off his injuries, but he had already suspected he would not be so lucky, as he spotted familiar faces in the locker room who would surely wish to josh with him about the injury he had sustained that morning.

As he crossed the threshold of the locker room, moving each foot with great care to avoid showing any signs of suffering, the bustling scene before him took a turn for the manic as a figure began barging through the centre of the crowd, noticeable as much for the fact that it was a woman and dressed colourfully as much as the fact that she was almost literally beating aside demons twice her height, three times her bulk and infinitely more powerful than she herself could ever aspire to be. Hiei's feet stopped moving as she drew in close to him and began talking, neither his blurry mind nor his blurry eyes at first registering that she was in fact addressing him.

"You definitely look like you could use my services."

She lifted up a case in front of his face, and he blinked and squinted at it before lazily slapping his free hand against it, in what he felt was a feeble gesture, yet almost took her off her feet as the case swung out her side and she struggled to keep hold of it and maintain her balance.

"Do I look like the sort of fool who purchases drugs from a weak peddler like you?" he said in what he hoped was a firm voice and not the lazy slurring it sounded to his own ears.

"Hiei! I'm not here to sell you drugs, I'm here to give you drugs!" she replied.

Hiei paused.

"If you need them," she qualified in a fluttering tone.

From the back of the room, Chu called over a comment about being even more interested in what the woman kept in her box, eliciting a growl and wriggling fit in her. Seizing the opportunity of distraction, Hiei made to walk around her, but she deftly leapt into his path again, as though she had a wilful desire that the next thing he slapped aside out of his face was her entire being.

"Hiei, wait!"

In the same moment that he realised she knew his name, Hiei realised that the foolish woman before him was in fact that blue-haired ferry girl that was always following Yusuke around. Apparently she wanted to be noticed, as she was carrying a bulky metal briefcase bearing the logo of her home world, she had what looked like a rug over her shoulders, she had tied a white cloth over her mouth and she was wearing a pair of white spiral glasses that seemed to serve the sole purpose of blinding her.

"Let me help you."

Her words were almost amusing, as he felt as though he ought to be the one saying them to her: she was, after all, one more shrill outburst away from finding herself in the arms or claws of a demon with ill intentions.

"Move out of my way or I will move you out of my way," Hiei warned her.

"Come on now, Hiei, you are clearly in need of some assistance," she replied, entirely unaffected by his warning. "Why don't you just take a seat and let me help you?"

Quite apart from the fact that there were no benches in the locker room to take a seat on, her suggestion was the most ridiculous and naïve thing Hiei had ever heard, the sort of remark only a spirit could make, especially in the heart of Demon World, with such conviction. Even a human would know better than to declare a demon weak in front of other demons – backstage at a tournament, no less – and insist he accept assistance from someone so significantly weaker than he was. Hiei, who, as always, kept his head slightly turned from her, and his eyes never looking directly or even indirectly at her, found that, in his efforts to avoid having to look at the ridiculous sight of her, his eyes had reached a mirror, slightly clouded with steam, in the far corner of the room, near the entrance to the showers. In the mirror, he could see the ferry girl hunched over, a case in each hand, her pink kimono and red poncho only making her blue hair, tied up high in a ponytail that always looked thick and slightly messy, stand out all the more. But more than the sight of her poised before him – almost like a cat, ready to pounce on its prey – Hiei could see his own reflection, the lower half of his body looking merely wet as black did an excellent job of hiding the colour of blood, but his pale blue shirt looking almost like something the ferry girl would wear, blooms of both deep red and bright, almost pink, blood flaring outwards from the tear over the wound he was compressing with his fist.

He looked vulnerable.

He side-stepped and the ferry girl instantly matched his movement, presumably as she thought he was about to make an attempt to bypass her again; but rather he was moving himself to clarify his view of something else in the mirror. Behind himself, on the wall in the hall outside of the locker room, Hiei could see the tournament board, and the sight of it reminded him that he would soon be facing Mukuro. He knew all too well that she would have been watching his fight that morning very closely, and the last thing he needed was her taunting him in their meet, besting him because she exploited a weak spot from a wound he had foolishly let himself receive, chiding his rashness in battle as the fault for his defeat at her hand.

The ferry girl was talking at him, something he could as much see as hear, the reflection of her head bobbing about before him: but his view of both her reflection and the mirror itself were soon removed as he reached out his free hand and grabbed onto the folds of her poncho, turning quickly from the locker room and dragging her along the hall beyond. She chattered away in a tone that fluctuated between sharp and shrill, her sandalled feet slapping awkwardly against the floor as she staggered after him, but he neither listened to her words nor cared for her complaints, continuing along until he found a bench, whereupon he pulled her around to stand directly in front of him and began to sit down, dragging her down with him, squeaking and rabbling all the way, until her legs finally gave under her.

Once he had seated himself down onto the bench Hiei released Botan, crossing his arms over his chest, angling his head to one side and casting his eyes even further to that side, pressing his lips tightly together and clenching his jaws as she knelt before him, peering up at him over her stupid glasses, finally silent. Both held their positions for several seconds before she muttered something and slid her cases down at either side of herself, laying them flat and opening them up. Hiei focused his eyes onto a polished panelling on a wall to his left, the gleaming surface vaguely reflective, affording him a transparent view of the woman knelt before him as she began moving her hands about in one of her cases. The sound of rattling plastics, metal and glasses and the incompetent muttering and humming she was making quickly wore out what little patience he had been willing to afford her and he moved his eyes to her long enough to reach out a hand and snatch the glasses from her face and fling them away. His movements were swift enough that by the time she had reacted, he had already refolded his arms and averted his eyes from her again.

"What was that for?" she demanded.

"I'm hardly about to let you start probing at my wound with your inferior equipment when you can't even see what you are doing," he grumbled in reply.

"Well you could have just asked me if I minded removing my glasses, rather than just snatching them off my face and breaking them against a wall!" she retorted with every bit as much vigour as before.

Hiei moved his eyes to her, and her straight-spined, bright-eyed conviction quickly withered under his glare, her entire being shrinking down and the sparkle fading from her eyes, her pupils contracting and slender blue eyebrows twisting.

"Make yourself useful or else make yourself scarce," he warned her.

She nodded, the action causing a bead of sweat that had formed by her hairline to slip down the side of her face until it was absorbed by the cloth dust mask she was wearing. Hiei moved his eyes back to the reflective surface, where he saw as well as heard her sigh in a clear statement of relief that she was no longer under his glare. She slowly reached out quivering hands towards him, her touch almost irritatingly uncomfortable as her nerves had drawn any heat from her fingers. She slid her cold, clammy fingers around his wrists and applied pressure to him, though it was hardly effective.

"Um, Hiei, you're going to have to move your arms to let me get access to your wounds," she said in a low, trembling tone.

He unfolded his arms and moved them to his sides, gripping into the bench, at first mostly relieved that doing so rid him of the touch of her cold fingers: but the consequences of his actions left him twitching and irritated as he felt blood and plasma weep openly from his wound without the pressure of his touch to stem the leak, and, with his arms at his sides and his weakness fully exposed, he felt vaguely weakened, as though he were literally lying down before a rival and waiting to be killed.

"Oh… Oh my goodness…" Botan muttered. "You know Hiei, it's really quite bad. A wound like this really needs packing or stitching. An antiseptic wipe and my healing powers can only do so much."

Hiei growled in irritation and shifted his eyes back to her, and again she shirked down away from him, her eyes almost popping out of her head as he lifted his right hand from the bench, glowing with a black flame.

"H-Hiei!" she yelped. "Just remember I was only trying to help you! There's no need to kill me!"

Hiei moved his eyes from her, to avoid having to watch the effect his next actions would undoubtedly have on her and to avoid her seeing any hint of suffering his eyes might betray as he held the flame against his open wound, holding his breath to contain a gasp or grunt of discomfort as he sealed his wound – something, in hindsight, he realised he ought to have done much sooner. Once he had completed his task, he moved his hand back to grip at the bench at his side, this time because he needed the security to disguise the unsteadiness of his hand. He kept his jaw clenched and his eyes averted, but this time he did not look so far away, Botan lingering on the edge of his vision, blinking large eyes at the sight before her.

"Well now…" she said slowly. "That was… Very effective, wasn't it?"

She began to lean in closer to him, her fingers stretching out towards his cauterised wound.

"It sealed the wound, but it didn't burn you," she muttered, probably more to herself than to him. "Oh yes! Because you are a fire demon! Yes, of course! How clever!"

"Are you going to make yourself useful or are you just going to run your mouth at me?" Hiei ground out, keeping his teeth clenched and his eyes averted from her as he spoke.

"Yes, of course," she immediately replied.

She poured something with an alcoholic odour strong enough to clear Hiei's sinuses in one breath onto a cloth and pressed it onto his wound, his attempts to hold in a groan of pain resulting in his fingers biting through the bench at his sides, cracks spreading outwards from where he sat along the grain of the wood.

"This might sting a little."

Hiei tried to growl at her ridiculously late warning, but the sound came out a little scratchy and squeaky and so he quickly silenced himself and redirected his energy into keeping himself still and silent as she began dragging the cloth over the wound. When she finally finished, she withdrew the cloth, smeared in blood and soot, and dropped it to the floor, holding her hands over him and releasing the warming, soothing sensation of her healing power. He involuntarily let out a shuddering sigh of relief, and unfortunately for his pride, the sound did not go unnoticed by his caretaker, pink eyes moving up to his face and white cloth shifting upwards in what was clearly a smile beneath her mask.

"That's sufficient, leave me now," Hiei mumbled, swatting her hands away from himself.

"I've barely even started!" she protested, pushing her fists into her hips. "If you don't let me at least dry the wound over, you will be left with an enormous ugly scar!"

"You've served your purpose, now go," Hiei warned her.

Her eyes moved to his left arm, crossing slightly, one hand leaving her side to point accusingly at the thin, faintly purple band around his arm, a lasting reminder of his battle against Shigure to prove his worth to Mukuro.

"Look at this, you tetchy jerk!" she snapped. "You're covered in scars, all resultant from impatience and an inability to allow yourself to fully heal from any wound you suffer!"

Hiei moved his eyes directly to her, but this time she did not cower down, the glimmer of determination and outrage shining as radiantly as ever in her eyes as she looked directly back at him without hesitation.

"You have so many scars, do you realise what that says about you?" she asked, in a presumptive, leading manner, as though she thought she already knew his answer and was merely waiting for him to voice it so that she could pounce on him with her pre-planned rebuttal.

"It tells me I'm a scar away from making it," he calmly replied, moving his eyes to the tournament listings on the wall behind Botan.

It was then his turn to have misunderstood her reaction to his words, as, rather than turn around to check what he was referring to, she instead pinched at the ragged tear in his shirt by his wound, holding up the threads towards his face.

"Yes, and a stitch away from falling apart!" she boldly announced.

Hiei looked into her eyes, he even tried narrowing his eyes and curling his lip just enough to expose a fang at her, but she would not break. He had no idea what was motivating her, but the usual fear he knew she felt for him was thoroughly absent. Her chest was visibly moving, and the volume of her heavy breathing was only further accented by the ridiculous dust mask she was still wearing over her mouth and nose.

He slowly extracted his fingers from the bench at his side, first with his right hand, which he then moved towards her. She still did not falter, though as his index finger, extended loosely ahead of his hand, neared her face, her eyes moved to it, blue eyebrows twitching curiously as she watched his movements. She squeaked out a noise of complaint and closed one eye as he poked his finger into the small gap in her mask by one side of her nose, but she neither resisted physically nor argued verbally as he slid his finger downwards, pulling the mask with it. As his knuckles slid over her jaw she let out an "ow", the ties of the cloth clearly pulling at her ears, and so he stopped, bunching up the loosened fabric in his fist.

"Hiei, that hurts!" she protested sulkily, her tone telling that she felt little more than a slight discomfort.

He extracted his left hand from the bench and reached it around the back of her head, keeping his eyes on hers and the pouty way she was looking up at him. Her expression softened a fraction when his hand closed around base of her ponytail and she squeaked again when he slowly pulled downwards, tilting her head back against her will. She made an unpleasant squawking noise and waved a hand aimlessly in the air, clearly not entirely pleased that she was trapped in place by her mask and her choice of hairstyle, but she said nothing and made no attempt to struggle or escape, and so Hiei assumed she accepted and understood his intentions.

And on that basis, he leaned over her, pressing his mouth over hers. She moaned into him, her mouth vibrating against his, her throat buzzing against the side of his hand, still holding down her mask. One of her hands made a loose, arcing wave over the top of his head, her hand slapping the ground as it fell to her side again, but otherwise she made no protest, and so he stood up and leaned over her, gripping her mask and hair tighter and sucking her lower lip into his mouth, sending the tone of her moan crashing downwards and fading into a whimper.


	3. Kiss Away These Thrills

**Kiss Away These Thrills**

Hiei detached himself from Botan with a slurping sound, that, to her ears, sounded not unlike the sound that came from forcibly pulling one of Spirit World's giant snails from a melon that had been left on the vine a little longer than it ought to have been. She swayed slightly as his hands detached from her along with his lips, the sudden withdrawal of his firm grasp holding her in place and the slight dizziness she felt from having her head forced back and her breath restricted leaving her a little woozy. Hiei stood in front of her, looking down at her with an unreadable expression, and, completely at a loss for words, she looked up, meeting his gaze and attempting to manipulate the muscles in her face to form an expression that would be questioning.

However, instead of offering her any sort of explanation for his actions, instead his eyes lifted fractionally, red irises gaining a glint accented by the marginal dilation of his pupils as the tip of his tongue edged out and ran slowly over his upper lip.

"Why."

Botan breathed the word out, not even bothering to form it as a question, as she already suspected she would not get an answer. She was confused but more in the sense that nothing of what Hiei was doing that day was making any sense to her: she never honestly expected him to accept her offer of help to heal his wound, and the fact that he had only left her wondering what sort of mental wound he had been inflicted with during his fight that morning.

"Because I've always wanted to."

Botan's heavy, breathy gasps halted entirely: and among the myriad of thoughts schooling in her mind, one included the curiosity that her heart could still race so forcefully, still pound so relentlessly at her chest despite the lack of air to fuel it. Hiei punctuated his response with a very slight shrug of his shoulders before stepping past her. She let out the air she had been holding in one sharp exhalation, something she promptly regretted the volume of as it appeared to trigger a response in Hiei, who halted his exit. She slowly moved her eyes to her side, choosing to look down rather than up, rather than risk seeing that dangerously sly look in his eyes again, her gaze landing on his booted feet. His foot nearest her twisted on his heel, the toe end of his boot hitting her first aid box with enough force to make both the case and Botan jump, but not hard enough that he moved or damaged it.

"You make yourself too noticeable," he commented. "You would hide yourself better in plain sight: remove your ridiculous disguise, pick up this crap and don't carry it around so openly, for everyone to see."

She kept her eyes on his feet, the pounding of her heart reaching up through her throat and into her head, until the vision of his booted feet almost seemed to be fluctuating in rhythm with her racing pulse. He grunted and his feet moved on with slow, purposeful steps, shortly moving out of her line of sight, and, in the brief moment of clarity awarded to her with his visual absence, the swirling fog of screaming, unspoken thoughts inside her head subsided to leave just one thing behind: outrage.

She was on her feet and turned around, glaring after him, in an instant.

"You…!" she shrieked, pushing her tongue into the roof of her mouth before she could finish her cry as the shrill sound of her own voice warned her that she sounded far more irrational than she needed to if she had any hope of conveying her displeasure to an apathetic stone wall like Hiei.

He stopped walking, his hands in his pockets, but did not turn and did not speak. She pursed her lips and inhaled sharply through her flared nostrils, but in pressing her lips together she achieved little more than to refresh the buzz that still lingered there from Hiei's assault. She opened her mouth and took a deep breath, pointing a finger at Hiei's back, but again her voice failed her. He stayed on point, not moving and not making a sound, leaving her both relieved that he was not making a getaway and removing her chance to chastise him, but equally bringing a frustrating heat to her face as she felt the weight of her own inarticulate shock bear down and debilitate her from responding.

Finally, after several, painful seconds, he moved his head, just enough that she was afforded a side view of one still glinting eye peering back over his shoulder at her.

"Hn, if I had known it was this easy to silence you, I would have done this a long time ago."

Botan drew in a long, deep gasp at his remark, but he merely grunted and turned his head away again. He lifted a foot as though to walk away, but with speed that defied even her own expectations, Botan stamped a foot loudly on the ground, her fists clenching at either side of her chin.

"You can't do that to me, Hiei!" she ranted, her tone barely less squeaky and pathetic than it had been on her previous attempt to speak.

Hiei turned his head a little further, giving her a fuller view of his face, looking back over his shoulder at her.

"I just did," he pointed out, his tone betraying a hint of amusement she rarely heard from him.

"No you did not," she responded in a low, breathy voice.

"Yes I did," he calmly corrected her.

"You can't do that!"

She placed a hard emphasis on the word "can't", her sandal slapping the hard floor as she again stamped her foot at him in sheer frustration.

"I just demonstrated that I can."

"Well you shouldn't!"

"Maybe not, but I can."

Botan squawked out a noise of feminine ire that was met with another grunt and then the back of Hiei's head. This time, however, she did not wait for him to try to move away before delivering her retort.

"How would you like it if I came over there and grabbed a handful of your hair and forced you to kiss me without even making it romantic first?"

She instantly regretted letting her response run as long as it did, a small voice in the back of her mind chiding her for not ending what had started out as such a strong argument a good six words earlier than she did, but she quashed the question and glared expectantly at the back of Hiei's head. A good deal of her enthusiasm evaporated from her, as though the sweat breaking out over her body had turned to steam when Hiei turned around fully, to face her directly, looking her straight in the eye: something he so rarely did with anyone.

"Well?" she asked, turning her nose in the air and fumbling angrily with the bandana she had been wearing as a mask, which was still irritatingly bunched under her chin, where Hiei had left it. "How would like it Hiei, hm?"

The suffix of her question came out as a high-pitched squeak that actually echoed off the high walls of the hall, but she covered any embarrassment it caused her by wrestling the makeshift mask from her face and angrily flinging it away. In her mind, the cloth would leave her hand and slap Hiei in the face, but in reality, it frittered through the air, swirled back towards her and then landed harmlessly on the floor just ahead of her toes. Her eyes moved to it and she pouted and clenched her fists and wondered if she picked it up and compressed it into a ball before launching it at Hiei if it might hit him in the nose.

All thoughts of a counter-attack vanished from Botan's mind when she heard a slow, creaking, tearing of fabric.

Despite almost not wanting to, she raised her eyes to Hiei, watching him slowly and steadily expanding the hole in the centre of his shirt, his hands pulling until he had torn the entire length of it open. He then released it, ragged material falling loosely, leaving a strip of skin up the centre of his torso exposed – including the entirety of the still barely scabbed over wound on his abdomen. His hands moved out to his sides, palms facing up and he dipped his chin, the glint in his eye sharpening, sending a stabbing feeling into the pit of her stomach. Her eyes stretched out wide as one part of her dared to think that she understood his gesture whilst the other part of her rallied against it in a fitful, fearful denial.

Almost as though he had read her thoughts without his Jagan, his middle two fingers on each hand twitched in a beckoning gesture, the confirmation of his challenge stilling her breath in her lungs once more.

For a protracted moment in time they remained as they were: Hiei, shirt torn open and arms open, inviting her to retaliate, and Botan, frozen in shock, fists clenched by her chin, lips parted and eyes wide.

The moment ended with a grunt from Hiei, his hands moving back into his pockets. He turned smoothly around to present his back to her once more and started back towards the locker room, and this time, she did not try to stop him. As the sound of his feet clicking against the hard floor moved away from her, her eyes fell to her cases, still open on the floor by her feet. She lowered herself into a crouch and retrieved a set of tweezers from her first aid box, moving it over to the discarded, bloody wipe she had used on Hiei. She began trying to pinch the cloth with the tweezers to pick it up with the intention of disposing of it: but, after three failed attempts to work the delicate tool with her still shaking hands, she threw it down and stomped after Hiei with renewed vigour.

"Hiei!" she roared as she entered the locker room.

The rowdy room fell instantly silent as every demon face turned to the irate ferry girl standing before them: but her attention was fixed onto Hiei, her vision tunnelled, her focus on him so intense that everything else around her was blurred out. There were a few bodies standing between her and Hiei, as he was already at the entrance to the showers, but, as though her anger was a force even an S-class demon would not dare defy, one by one they backed away, clearing a path between her and the fire demon. The last to move was Kurama, long hair wet down his back, white cotton towel hanging on his hips, bright green eyes watching Botan with a degree urgency they rarely betrayed. Yusuke said something inaudible to him and he turned his head abruptly, wet tails of red slapping Yusuke across the face.

"Come on man, seriously?" Yusuke complained in a voice loud enough to carry.

Kurama muttered an apologetic reply and stepped back, leaving one half of the demons in one corner of the room and the other half in the other, a diagonal line from Botan to Hiei cleared as though they were two powers to be reckoned with, rather than a blushing, quivering mess of a ferry girl and bruised and bloodied little man who was only spared full nudity by grace of the fact that one of his hands was still loosely holding his open pants very low over his hips.

"Do you intend to pursue me into the shower?" Hiei asked, that malicious, mischievous, mocking glint returning to his eyes.

"Obviously not!" Botan shouted back, trying to deafen her ears to the amused snorts and mutterings Hiei's little witticism had invoked in their audience.

His already tenuous grasp of his pants loosened and she heard as much as she saw his clothing slide lower.

"You can't!" she blurted out, throwing an over-the-shoulder pointed finger at him.

"I can, and I did," he flatly replied.

She growled and turned her hands up in the air ahead of her face, her fingers forming into claws.

"And Botan?"

The rest of the locker room fell as still and silent as the ferry girl herself did at the sound of her name on his tongue.

"So can you."

Botan's jaw fell at the same time Hiei's pants did. He backed away from her, into the shower room, and as he faded into shadow, as the sight of his naked body and confident eyes disappeared from her sight, she regained her composure and threw another pointing finger after him.

"I will get my revenge on you, Hiei!" she yelled.

"I'll be waiting," he called back from the shadows.

She screamed out another growl of frustration before turning flashing eyes to Yusuke, standing by the shower entrance, his mouth contorted somewhere between a smirk and a gape of disbelief.

"Shut-up, Yusuke!" she shrieked.

He grumbled a complaint but she had spun on her heels and was out of the room before he could finish. She marched angrily back over to her cases and kicked the bloody cloth all the way to the nearest waste bin, which she then hoisted up and turned over, slamming it down, upside-down, over the dirty rag. She then marched back over to her cases, scooping up any spilled contents and dumping them back into the cases before slamming them shut and gathering both boxes into her arms.

As she marched away, back towards the seating area to find Koenma and Jorge, Botan narrowed her eyes and gripped her fingers into her cases, reaffirming her vow out loud as she left.

"I will have my revenge…"

 **The End**


End file.
